Really John, MSU was "set up" on your own home field? With your own staff handling security and field prep?

I'm a Republican, so I'm saying this as a friend: you sound like an idiot and you should stop. It was a petty mind-game stunt that backfired. Focus on the culture of your own institution. Let this one go.

I dunno. Maybe it's poetic justice. I missed almost the entire first half before I found a slightly sketchy website with a decent live stream. If FIFA doesn't have the brains to make a game of this importance available in the US, they deserve to lose the US market. Having the Americans crash out of the World Cup would be one way to do that.

Forgive me for picking a nit, but I don't know if I'd call that a garbage time TD. AFA would have needed a TD and a field goal to win -- not likely in a minute and a half but crazier things have happened. Bottom line: if I were coaching I'd have my first string offense out there to add points or run out the clock just to be sure.

Let's put it this way: if this defense is going to have a cool nickname, it will come out of something one of the players says, or maybe some comment from a coach, but it won't happen because some commentor on a blog says "Hey, let's give this defense a nickname!"

If Brandon were still here, he might try to assign the defense a nickname, but it would be a total marketing gimmick and it would suck and everyone would hate it.

My feelingsball take is the opposite. Speight struggled at times against a very strong defense, but also delivered some excellent passes. It looked to me like he's doing a decent job of reading defenses -- the one interception aside -- and the TD to Darboh was dead-on.

My feelingsball take is the opposite. Speight struggled at times against a very strong defense, but also delivered some excellent passes. It looked to me like he's doing a decent job of reading defenses -- the one interception aside -- and the TD to Darboh was dead-on.

I'll admit to being pleased by the result. And I appreciate the irony of Sparty losing on a bad call. But don't call it schadenfreude. This is a genuinely good result for Michigan. We need MSU to lose twice while we win out if we are going to win the division. Sparty just lost one of those two games. If Penn State were in MSU's place, I'd feel about the same.

This isn't about hating Sparty. Truth be told, I only let myself indulge in Spartan loathing for about ten days a year -- a week before the game and a couple days afterward. The rest of the time I am indifferent. It's keeping things in perspective. That's part of being the more mature, bigger brother.

And yes, Sparty's probably going to take a step back next year, but it's way early to write them off as a contender in the league.

How do you know what effect the rule is having? Any stats or research to back that up?

All I know is if this is how they are going to enforce the rule, it will just be a matter of time before we see more late hits as offensive players try to manufacture helmet to helmet hits. That's what the refs wound up rewarding here.

And what else, pray tell, should we talk about? This is a blog that is primarily devoted to a football team. That football team played a game last saturday. That game featured some controversial decisions and ended with a rather interesting play.

Do you really expect us to talk about anything else?

It seems to me that a lot of the stoicism on display lately ("We lost. Deal with it") is really poorly disguised peevishness.

I was wondering - maybe this guy was on to something? Maybe if every person in the stands had flipped the bird at the same time, maybe one of the refs would have thrown a flag, the play would have been nullified, and we would have won? Just a thought.

Me? I'm actually working, for the most part. As long as I can get out of here by 6 or so I should be in front of my TV by kickoff. So I'm checking the blog every now and then, otherwise I'm keeping things going so I can walk out when I really need to.

...you will be pretty safe in assuming that Hoke will come out of this looking better than Brandon did. If nothing else, Hoke did not have the luxury of 17 hours of deliberation. Whatever mistakes Hoke made, they were under the pressures and demands of coaching a football game.